


this train don't stop here anymore

by torigates



Category: Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I guess they weren’t as good friends as we are,” Joey said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this train don't stop here anymore

  
“I wonder how Monica and Chandler could do it.”

“I guess they weren’t as good friends as we are,” Joey said.

Rachel put her head on his shoulder and hummed in assent. “That must be it.”

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

She lay awake for a long time that night trying to figure out why things hadn’t worked out between her and Joey. After a long time she heard him move off the couch and into his own bedroom. She still wasn’t any closer to an answer.

They should have worked together.

They were attracted to each other—at least Rachel knew she was attracted to Joey, and there was no way he wasn’t attracted to her. She had seen the way he had reacted to her when they kissed. They loved each other. It should have worked.

They should have worked together. But they didn’t.

She watched Monica and Chandler, and tried to figure out what it was about them that allowed the transition from friends to lovers to the most stable and solid couple Rachel had ever seen. She watched them and tried to see what was different about them, but she couldn’t.

She watched Joey and couldn’t figure out what had been missing. She watched the way he walked and moved and talked, and sometimes it made her so sad that they hadn’t made it. Sometimes she thought if they had only been able try harder, try longer, but no. They’d given it everything they had.

It wasn’t fair, she thought.

 

 

 

++

 

 

 

Years later, Rachel wouldn’t change the course of her life. Things happened for a reason, as the cliché went, and that was a personal philosophy she had adopted whole heartedly.

She could still remember being sixteen years old and hanging out in Monica’s bedroom, talking about how they would be best friends when they were older and how their kids would be best friends. Now she sat in Monica’s backyard, drinking a glass of wine and watching their children play together.

It was surreal.

Chandler came around with the bottle to give them both refills. Ross and Mike were at the BBQ, and Rachel could tell it was practically killing Monica to let someone else do the cooking in her house.

“Why don’t you just go take over?” Chandler asked in her ear, and Rachel smiled. All that time they spent talking about what kind of boys they would end up with, and Monica could not have picked a better man for herself.

She shook her head. “I’m relaxing.”

Chandler kissed her head but didn’t say anything else. Rachel did notice he filled her wine glass liberally.

She laughed, and shared a look with Phoebe. Monica pointed at her. “Don’t you say anything.”

Rachel sipped her wine.

They all sat around Monica and Chandler’s impressive outdoor table. There was a big umbrella overhead shading the sun, and the meal was spread out in front of them. The kids were sitting at a smaller picnic table next to them, and Rachel sat back in her seat and soaked in the moment.

Joey sat down next to her and smiled. His plate was piled high with barbequed meat and various salads (potato, not green). Some things never changed.

“Hi sweetie,” Rachel said.

“Hey Rach,” he said, already shovelling food into his mouth.

Around her, her friends were laughing and talking and eating. Sometimes she still felt sad about what had happened between her and Joey, or what _hadn’t_ happened between them. In many ways they never would have worked together. They were too different, they were too similar, but there was something about the two of them together that just fit.

Monica would always be her best friend, and in many ways Ross was and always would be the love of her life, but Rachel thought Joey was probably her soul mate. They worked together in ways that shouldn’t quite go together, but did.

He was always the person she called first with good news. He was the person she wanted to talk to about the mundane details of her day to day life, in part because she knew he would always be interested and want to hear what she had to say. She was always the person he called after interviews, and she was the person he called first to say he’d be coming home for good.

Rachel could still remember that conversation. The way that Joey’s voice had sounded flat on the other side of the phone, on the other side of the world.

“What’s up, Joe?” she asked.

“I’m coming home,” he said.

Rachel smiled wide. “When? For how long?” It had been months since he’d last been in New York, and she missed him desperately.

He paused, and she could hear his hesitation.

“Joey, what’s wrong?” she asked, her previous excitement gone.

“I’m coming back to New York,” he said. “For good.”

There had been a lot of conversations after that. Conversations about how he shouldn’t give up, conversations about how talented he was, and the success he had already achieved, conversations with her, and Chandler, and all their other friends, but deep down Rachel had known right from that first phone call that he would be coming home for good. There was no convincing him this time.

He came home.

He still acted—in plays, commercials, bit parts on television, but Rachel always felt like after he came home from California that the enthusiasm that drove Joey’s acting was just not there. It broke her heart for him, when she thought about it, but on the whole he seemed happy to be in New York. To be back with his friends (and sometimes, she thought, with her).

 

 

 

++ 

 

 

 

“I wonder how Monica and Chandler could do it.”

“I guess they weren’t as good friends as we are,” Joey said.

Rachel had a lot of time to think about why things between them had never developed romantically, why they hadn’t been able to take that last step, as much as they both had wanted it. For a long time it made her sad that they had never been together.

Then she thought about the million different phone calls, conversations, meals, and jokes they had shared. She thought about all the little things that made their relationship so special and so great, and she wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world.

They were so much more than a romantic connection, or a few dates. She shared something with Joey that she had with no one else in her life, and if that meant they could never take that step from friends to lovers, than that was something she could live with.

That must be it, Rachel thought. That must be it.


End file.
